


Circles, Life, Revolving Doors, and Other Things that Never End

by quicksilverdeancas (quicksilvermalec)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, I Don't Even Know, I'm Sorry, M/M, No Dialogue, Recap of Many Canon Events, Reincarnation, enjoy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 21:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilvermalec/pseuds/quicksilverdeancas
Summary: So he watched. Again and again. He had never left Heaven, not in all the time this man had been appearing and reappearing. He never interacted. He simply watched.Every thirty years or so it would be someone new. A different time, a different place, a different name… but always the same face, and always the same soul.And if Castiel wasn’t deceiving himself,Dean Winchestertruly fit him best.





	Circles, Life, Revolving Doors, and Other Things that Never End

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this idea came from but I love it.
> 
> Enjoy!

Ever since The Beginning, it seemed, it had been happening.

Or at least, for as long as he had been conscious. He had been observing the two of them in his spare time, without their knowledge – or Their knowledge, upstairs – as long as he could remember. He thought this must be his curse.

The younger seemed like the kind of human that, if he ever left Heaven, he would like to be ‘friends’ with. The human concept of friends only made sense to him in an abstract way, but he could, intellectually, understand the pleasantness of having other humans who were willing to spend their free moments with you, just because they appreciated your presence, because they enjoyed having you around. The older was the problem.

The older was the one that he was fascinated by, the one he watched for hours. Every time he was alone, he would observe him doing the most mundane things – eating, sleeping, brushing his teeth – and he felt entranced. The older was the one that he wanted to be closer to, to speak to in person, to touch. To see if he felt quite as _real _and _whole _and _human _as he seemed on the angelic equivalent of television viewing screens.

So he watched. Again and again. He had never left Heaven, not in all the time this man had been appearing and reappearing. He never interacted. He simply watched.

Every thirty years or so it would be someone new. A different time, a different place, a different name… but always the same face, and always the same soul.

Always a different name, a different family, a different life, but the same person. The same reckless, angry, beautiful person who would tragically die before he hit thirty – and his brother too – and be magically (re: angelically) reborn anew.

A different name, he noted every time, and he remembered them all. But if Castiel wasn’t deceiving himself, _Dean Winchester _truly fit him best.

He watched Dean remotely, every life that he had. Every time, he could feel, they were getting closer to The One, to The Right One. And when it came, he felt that too, like a chill in his essence.

(Castiel had always been a little more human than most angels.)

He watched as Michael’s vessel was born, as he was raised. He watched as Heaven held back his brother for long enough for it to all work, and he knew that this was it. This was The One that they had been waiting for. He watched as John and Mary Winchester raised their son with love and care and as the objectively lovely (he didn’t really swing that way) blonde told him each night “angels are watching over you.”

If he didn’t have a sinking sense of dread in the pit of what would be his stomach had he a body in which to contain one, he would have almost laughed at how unnaturally accurate and ironic her assertion was.

He watched as Lucifer’s vessel was born again, and named Sam this time. Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester. A beautiful, poetic pair of names, and how fitting that this time, when it would all end <strike>(when Castiel would finally lose him)</strike> they would be named for a gun, an instrument of pain and destruction, much like the boys themselves.

How fitting, that Castiel would watch it happen, that he knew, somewhere deep down, what humans would call this feeling of fear and anger and hate at the fact that he knew his brother was going to inhabit that face one day, but that he could not call it by its name because _he was an angel _and_ angels do not have emotions._

He watched Azazel power Sam and kill their mother, watched John turn hard and cold like stone, watched him raise his children on suffering and repression and fast food in a long string of cold and impersonal motel rooms.

He watched as Sam grew restless – he always did, one way or another, he always fled, reflective of Lucifer, who Castiel knew was destined to possess him but for some reason wished he weren’t – and Dean conflicted. He watched Sam fight both his brother and father, again and again, even when Dean took his side – reflective of Lucifer. He watched both of them become self-destructive and angry.

And he watched Sam leave, and he would have followed, would have checked up, but it wasn’t truly Sam that he was interested in, and… Sam had an angel watching over him, too.

So he stayed with Dean, watched as Dean got older and rougher and progressively more bitter with every day that Sam was away at college.

He watched Dean go back for him, when he couldn’t take it anymore, when he saw his opportunity to have his brother back, and that always happened, too – Dean was always the one who reconnected, Dean was always the one most hurt. They always forged the kind of bond that two people cannot break no matter how much they hated each other sometimes, no matter how much they wished they could escape themselves.

He watched Sam agree, and that was one more thing that always happened.

He watched them grow apart, and grow back together, and he watched them fall apart over and over and never fit back quite the way they’d been before, never quite how they wanted to be.

And it came down to the prospect of Hell, and that was when the true colors shined through – on everyone’s parts. He watched Sam do everything he possibly could to save his brother and he watched Dean not care too much one way or the other. He watched Dean tell his brother he didn’t need to do this, but not fight him too hard.

He knew that Dean thought he was broken, and right there was the proof. He knew that Dean hated himself like he hated little else in the world, and loved his brother like he was the only thing still worth loving, and he knew that Dean was ready to sacrifice himself. He was ready to become a martyr if it meant that Sam would live.

Mother fucking idiot Winchesters and their stupid self-sacrificing Winchester bullshit.

(That was all that Castiel had to say on the topic.)

God never really Commanded it. That was a lie. Castiel happened to be very good at those, despite popular opinion. It took Castiel four months to slip away from Heaven relatively unnoticed, which was four months longer than he had wanted to wait. He knew how fast time moved in Hell.

But he got Dean out, and he knew Heaven had only let him escape because they could track him and because it was part of the plan (Plan? There was so much confusing capitalization in Heaven that even Castiel couldn’t keep it straight all the time), but it didn’t matter that the other angels were going to come after him because Dean was safe… sort of.

The first thing that Dean did was stab him, which he probably deserved but did not expect. It did, however, remind him that this was _Dean_, who was dynamic and intense and Castiel had never actually interacted with him in person. It reminded him that he knew Dean in a lot of ways, but not the conventional one, and also that Dean did not know him, and he should probably remedy that.

Dean was aggressive and provocative with him at first, and Castiel, on instinct, was aggressive back.

(Although, he was somewhat confused as to what exactly his relationship with Dean could be described as, because while Dean yelled at him and acted childish and passive-aggressive often in his presence [though, that might have just been the way Dean was], he had also given him a nickname, a nickname that was much better than Balthazar and Gabriel’s nickname for him, and one that he actually liked.)

Eventually it became clearer. Castiel made his boundaries more obvious and staked everything on one side of the cosmic fight and he and Dean became friends, and he and Sam became friends, and he allowed himself to recognize what he felt for these two men; love.

He forced himself to remember that he felt love for both of them the same. He did not play favorites, he did not care who won, he just loved humanity and he loved Dean and Sam.

Castiel watched his friends stop the Apocalypse, uproot the Divine Plan (yes, capital P, thank you), and destroy everything he’d worked for. He didn’t care much.

Castiel watched, up close, as Dean cycled through self-destructive behaviors and highly dangerous endeavors. He watched him drink and flirt and scream and break things and wake up and do everything again. He watched him die for Sam, take the Mark of Cain, become a demon, and keep dying for Sam and for Jack and even for Cas himself again and again. He watched him destroy himself.

Castiel prayed every day that Dean would realize how important he was – not to Destiny or God or Heaven or Hell or any of that because, in Dean’s own words, fuck Destiny, fuck God, fuck Heaven and Hell – but to Castiel himself.

He wished Dean could understand the depth of Castiel’s feelings for him, and he knew this was his curse. He was cursed to know, to see, to understand, and ultimately, to fall in love with this doomed, ruined, and broken man he called his best friend. He knew that there was another world in which they might have had a chance, but it wasn’t this one. It most certainly was no this one.

He was helpless to protect Dean, so he watched from the sidelines, he loved him from afar as the hunter destroyed himself, as he drank himself to death. He let him despise himself because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do.

He didn’t give up on Dean, but he didn’t really give Heaven the big middle finger, either.

And there was his dilemma. He couldn’t have Dean without renouncing the angels but he would never fully be able to shed where he had come from, what he was. They were his family, and he knew that Dean understood family, but Dean also understood ‘feathery dicks.’

He wasn’t Gabriel. He couldn’t shrug off his brothers and sisters like a coat of water. He knew that Gabriel had left to protect himself and he wouldn’t begrudge him that, but Gabriel had also been his favorite brother, and he missed him.

He saw him only twice before he died, both times briefly. He was just as witty and quick-thinking and bitter as he had ever been.

He lived with the absence every day, but it didn’t affect him like the loss of his brother would affect Dean because Gabriel had been gone before. Gabriel had been gone for a thousand years and Castiel had gotten used to it, had numbed himself.

And then he just showed up again, and Castiel watched.

He watched Dean’s mind jump immediately to his gun, he watched Jack be confused, he watched Sam forget how to breathe.

That was the one that intrigued him. He had never known how much there was fiction and how much fact. How much was imagined fantasy and how much had actually happened. He hadn’t gone ‘snooping’ (as Dean would put it) around in Sam’s head on purpose, but he did project his thoughts very loudly, and sometimes he just couldn’t help it. There was so much Gabriel in his mind, and Castiel didn’t know what to do with that.

Until Gabriel showed up again and the box that Sam had managed to stuff all of that into popped open again and out flooded memories and fantasies and wishes and dreams and whole lot of fucking anger.

They were all surprised when Sam broke down in anger, chewed him out, screamed at him and told him how much he had missed him and how scared he had been and how much it hurt to be alone in the dark and Castiel related, Castiel had always been able to relate to Sam, but he hated the shocked, anguished, and downright miserable look that appeared on Gabriel’s face as Sam ranted.

Dean pulled Sam away, and Cas pulled Gabriel away, and eight weeks later, their respective brothers were sleeping together.

Neither of them particularly cared to know how that had happened.

And life went on. Castiel knew that Gabriel must have had the same experience he had – watching Sam’s soul shoved back into the world over and over and watching him grow up again and again and slowly falling in love with these many, many people that were all actually the same person.

He decided that if Gabriel could have his hunter than so could he (thanks to much coaxing from his older brother, because he was 100% sure that that was a terrible idea but what did Gabriel care? The answer was not at all).

He would love to say that he and Dean sat down and had a mature conversation about it, but in actuality, Dean got drunk and they had angry sex.

Which he then forgot and/or lied about the following day.

Eventually, Castiel gave up on ‘mature’ and ‘angelic’ and ‘proper’ and sat Dean down in a chair and said something that basically equated to ‘listen up you little shit I’m in love with you and I’m like 85% sure you love me too so just tell me instead of dancing around it’.

Dean loved him too.

And thus life went on.

They stayed in the bunker with Sam and Gabriel and Jack and Castiel was actually happy for once in his miserable angel life and Sam and Dean were actually happy for once in their miserable lives and finally nobody had to apologize or fight or try to martyr themself because they hated their reality.

Finally their world was at peace.

What a fucking relief.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like it's weird as hell but whatever.
> 
> Love,  
-Sil


End file.
